On Tuesday afternoon, 13 horses started their run at a racetrack outside Valparaiso, Chile, hooves pounding the dirt on what in that hemisphere was a 52-degree winter day.
Some 5,500 miles to the north, a WyoFile reporter making his first bet on a horse race sat within the cool interior of a former diner in Laramie, watching the horses run on television. He hit on a $10 bet on a horse named Viene Puelche, named after a warm Chilean wind. After collecting from the teller, he walked into the heat of the Wyoming summer $6 richer.
In the grand sums of money changing hands in Wyoming’s horse-race betting industry, the paltry bet was a snowflake in a blizzard.
